Wound is an exhibition presenting the continuum of Finnish expressivist painting from its early stages to the present day. What is expressivism? How have internal landscapes been interpreted and what emerges onto the canvas from the subconscious?

Jointly realized by the Galllen-Kalela Museum and the Rauma Art Museum, Wound is based on am exhibition concept by the painter Henry Wuorila-Stenberg and his vision. It assembles a number of Finnish artists involved in expressivist and figurative painting, whose works proceed from personal experience and the depiction of strong states of mind, moods and physicality. The wounds of body and soul are the underlying force of the work, and they emerge in portraits and landscape themes. The perspective underscores subjectivity and belief in the inner necessity of creating art lies in the background. Wound believes in the compulsion to paint and in paintings moving people, attaining things of an indefinite nature, opening gates, dumbfounding, and moving mountains.

The work of the artists on show underlines the problematization of painting technique - the study of the properties of material, means of expression and various opportunities. Painting is a means of non-verbal communication - a language with its codes created by layers of colour, pigments, variations of brushwork, the structure of the ground, forms…

Wound is a path of surprises leading to yesterday and the present moment, linking its artists over the span of generations. The exhibition shows how style is a factor that both unites and divides, beyond which different contents, views on making art and being an artist, ideas and goals emerge. In their time, Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Tyko Sallinen were opponents, but seen in a broader perspective they begin to approach one another - their works do not clash but instead they tell of similar thoughts and solutions concerning painting and its thematic. On the other hand works of highly different form can have content speaking the same language. Although the epithet of solitariness is attached to Vilho Lampi, Åke Mattas, Mauno Markkula and Olavi Martikainen, they were in close connection with their own time, community and the history of art.

The artists of the older generation established the background against which we can view the artists of the present day. The contemporary artists of Wound are no special group or school, but instead an example of the vitality and renewal of painting - without forgetting tradition. "The same generation, the same restlessness! … We have a past more in common than the future." (Jukka Korkeila)

Wound presents paintings of pain, loneliness and compassion - passing on the experiences of body and soul in a world of emotions, flesh, colour and shadows. The artist's experience and the wordless understanding arising from it expands into a complex interpretation of the human condition.

Anne Pelin, p. 849 2340
anne.pelin@gallen-kallela.fi